100 years ago in The Record: Sept. 11

Tuesday, Sept. 11, 1917

Former Troy postmaster Joseph A. Leggett is being groomed to return to his old post as chairman of the Rensselaer County Republican party organization, The Record reports today.

Leggett “was county chairman during several campaigns that were waged to victorious ends,” a reporter reminds readers.

If elected after next week’s primaries, Leggett would take the place of Harry Lewis, who seemingly has had one foot out the door for the last two years. Leggett’s supporters hope he can stabilize the GOP amid concerns that Lewis’s resignation “might widen the factional breach, and leave the party without a satisfactory chairman during the approaching campaign.”

The county chairman usually is chosen from the ranks of the county committee. “The present personnel of the committee apparently did not offer a man of sufficient experience,” our writer notes, “and there was nothing left to do but glance into the future” before Leggett entered the primary for Brunswick’s seat on the committee.

Advertisement

Leggett has “the requisite experience and is peculiarly situated in that he would meet the requirements of both the city and country adherents” by virtue of his Brunswick residence and his Troy connections.

“Mr. Leggett did not care to discuss the matter to-day, saying that it had not been broached to him officially and that he had heard it hinted only in a roundabout way,” our reporter writes, “He would not even say if he would accept it if it were offered to him.”

However, “a number of his friends and some prominent Republicans in the faction with which Mr. Leggett has been none too intimate enthusiastically urged his candidacy on the ground that if there is ever to be a thorough conciliation in the party it will have to be effected by the choice as chairman of some man known not to be dominated by the present controlling power.”

In other words, Republicans hope that Leggett can work with the faction led by Justice Wesley O. Howard and former state prison superintendent Cornelius V. Collins without being controlled by them.

WCTU CONVENTION

Harriet L. Doyle is reelected president of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union of Rensselaer County by delegates to today’s convention at the Troy Y.M.C.A. hall, The Record reports.

The WCTU is a lobby dedicated to the prohibition of alcoholic beverages. The organization is also lobbying this year in support of the upcoming state referendum on women’s suffrage.

In a “most encouraging report,” franchise committee chairman Margaret Kling reports that the county WCTU distributed over 1,200 pages of voting-rights literature over the past year, while encouraging local pastors to speak out in favor of suffrage.